Venice Allocates €220M for Restoration of Lake Garda’s Dogana Veneta
The health of the “Grande Fabbrica”, a symbol of the vestiges on Lake Garda of the Serenissima Repubblica, is also a concern for Venice. The regional council has allocated, on the proposal of the assessor for land defense and public works Massimo Giorgetti, a grant of 220 million euros as an urgent measure for the consolidation of the Dogana Veneta.
This measure is aimed at interventions regarding restoration and extraordinary maintenance of non-state-owned properties that concern the historical-artistic heritage. The grant, together with the one billion euros already allocated by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Verona, contributes to restoring a historic building that has occupied a significant role for the lacisiense population for over seven centuries.
Ongoing Projects and Interventions
The mayor Luca Sebastiano expressed satisfaction, as he sees the moment approaching when he can initiate a series of works related to a project that the municipal administration alone, with its productive forces, would never have been able to realize. A first step towards quickly awarding the contracts for the initial phase of strengthening interventions was recently taken by the municipal council, which approved the draft disciplinary regulation and confirmed to engineer Edoardo Ottoboni from Villafranca, architect Giorgio Ugolini from the studio “Architetti & Associati” in Verona, and engineer Giuseppe Tosti from Perugia the task of preliminary, definitive, and final design, project management, accounting, and safety duties for the static and functional recovery works of the Dogana Veneta.
By the end of the month, once the definitive project is completed, a call for tenders will be issued for works valued at 1.85 billion euros. Construction will commence already in summer, starting with interventions to the building’s foundations.
The architectural rehabilitation project mainly focuses on the portion facing Lake Garda of the Dogana, which is experiencing significant structural instability, and the roof remediation with inspection of the wooden parts, which form an “extraordinary play of beams, lintels, and trusses”.
According to the restoration plan, the building will be transformed once the large lakeside glass façade is removed; the closing of the arches of the large portico with a new metal profile and glass will also allow for the recovery of a substantial space. This will be used to repurpose the old Dogana as a venue for events and tourism purposes.